Chapter One
Rhys
PresentDay
“You should come home,” I growl into the phone, glaring out my kitchen window. Rain sheets from the sky, turning Friday Harbor into a hazy blob. Boats bob up and down in the water to the north, bouncing on their moorings. The usual, steady flow of traffic in the picturesque island town has ground to a halt. Everyone is inside, trying to wait out the storm.
They’ll be waiting a while. The storm isn’t expected to blow over until tomorrow at the earliest. Hopefully, that’ll keep the tourists off the island for one day. They’re the lifeblood of this place, but they’ve been swarming the island in droves. It’s only June. We still have four full months of the season to go.
A man can only take so much. And I’ve had about all I can stand for the week. My people skills have never been great. They’re even worse when drunk tourists are involved. They drive me nuts. Sue me.
“Rhys,” Cassia cries into the phone. “I’m not coming back to Washington. Will you stop saying that?”
“No,” I mutter, my scowl deepening. Even in the window, deep grooves appear on my forehead, making my displeasure evident. I’m irritable as all hell. It’s my permanent state.
Four months ago, my baby sister went on a girl’s trip to Lake Tahoe for Valentine’s Day, where she met, fell in love with, and married Cord Decker in a whirlwind romance. I don’t like it. Sure, he’s head over heels in love with her. Sure, I like him well enough. Sure, he treats her like a queen. But she’s my baby sister. I want her back in Washington, where I can keep an eye on her. God knows she needs it.
Trouble has a way of finding Cassia. Or rather, Cassia has a way of finding trouble. Case in point: today’s shitshow. She caught a field on fire, trying to teach herself how to build a bonfire for one of her books. Cord and his ranch hands were able to put it out before it did too much damage, but Christ Almighty. My sister is a menace. Cord should know better than to leave her to her own devices. She has terrible ideas.
“This is my home now,” she says with a huff. “I’m not coming back to Washington, Rhys.”
“Put Cord on the phone.”
“Why?” she asks, her tone rife with suspicion.
“I want to talk to him.”
“About what?”
“Stuff.”
“What stuff?”
“Just put him on the phone, Cassia,” I say, cracking a rare smile.
“Uh, no. It’s not his fault I’m good at setting things on fire,” she says.
“Good?” I quirk a brow, not sure how she reached that conclusion. “You set the field on fire, Cass.”
“Exactly. If I were bad at it, I wouldn’t have been able to start one at all, don’t you think?” she asks, completely serious.
“You…” Well, hell. She might have a point there. “Regardless of the semantics,” I say, moving away from the window as a clap of thunder strikes in the distance, rattling the pane of glass. “Tell your husband I’ll kill him if anything happens to you.”
Three months ago, I lost my best friend. I’ll be damned if I lose my baby sister too. Losing Brantley still has me fucked up in the worst way. The guilt is unbearable, but the burden is mine to carry anyway.
What I did…well, hell has a special place for people like me. But I can’t take it back. I’m not sure I even regret it. If he were here, I’m pretty damn confident he’d have made the same choice I did. Or maybe he wouldn’t have. I don’t know. Turns out, I didn’t know a lot of things.
Brantley Calloway had secrets. A lot of them. And I never had a clue.
I ate at his table, fished on his boat…drank his beer. He’s the reason I’m living on the island now. Without his support, I’d still be up to my ears in open homicide cases in Seattle. Instead, I’m one of two detectives in San Juan County. I spend the majority of my time investigating the bullshit that comes with tourism—assaults, robberies, theft. My job is golden compared to what it used to be.
Working homicide wears you down. It’s sixteen-hour shifts, six and seven days a week. There’s an endless parade of names and faces forever burned into my mind. None died easy. Most don’t rest easy either. Justice doesn’t bring back the dead or heal broken hearts. It never made much of a dent in the stack of open files on my desk, either.
I thought I had left all that behind. And then Marnie called me three months ago. She was hysterical, screaming that Brant was dead. My neatly ordered existence blew up in my face right then and there. I did what I had to do to protect the people who matter, but I damned myself in the process.
There are some things Raven never needs to know.
I’ll take those secrets to my grave to protect her. There isn’t a lot I won’t do for her.